This is Xiaoyu’s travel diary, stop and go, and see Shaanxi with me.
When walking deep in the Qinling Mountains, you can often encounter some abandoned old houses. Some of them are residential buildings, and some are factory courtyards. The former is the personal life of the owner who moved away from the mountains, while the latter often presents a macro narrative of an era.
In Feng County, Baoji, at the southern foot of the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province, when we visited the declining ancient city of Fengzhou, we encountered such a mysterious courtyard full of stories of the times.
The ancient city of Fengzhou was once an important town in the Qinling Mountains on the road from Guanzhong to Hanzhong and Bashu. Since the establishment of "Gudao County" in the early Qin Dynasty, it has been the seat of states, counties and counties for more than 2,200 years. It was not until the 1950s that the county seat of Fengxian County was moved to Shuangshipu Town, and it was gradually "reduced" to a village in Fengzhou Town: Fengzhou Village.
Fengzhou City is located in the Qinling Valley surrounded by mountains. Provincial Highway 212 and the Baocheng-Chengdu Railway "stand between" Fengzhou from the north to the south, facing each other across the Jialing River from the Douji Mountain Disaster Disaster Temple. Today, the general layout and street directions of the ancient city of Fengzhou have not changed much. There are still ruins of abandoned earthen walls in the east and west of the village, and some ancient Qingming buildings are still preserved in the village. You can vaguely see the prosperous past here.
We came across a mysterious courtyard in Dalao Lane on the easternmost side of the village. From a distance, it looks like this is not a residential building, but a factory building. Out of curiosity, I came over to find out.
As soon as we walked into the iron gate, the guard dog inside started barking at us. The owner responded and went out, chased away the dog, and quickly invited us to come into the yard and take a look. It turns out that this is not an abandoned factory building as we imagined, but inhabited by people.
The owner is a warm and honest elder sister, who is also a native of Fengzhou. It is said that this courtyard was originally a military dormitory building. When she was a child, she secretly watched an outdoor movie in the courtyard outside the courtyard. Later, the troops moved away and the place became deserted. She bought this building a few years ago and now her family lives in it.
What kind of army is this? We wanted to learn more about the history of the abandoned factory deep in the Qinling Mountains, but the eldest sister couldn't tell. At this time, another villager happened to pass by, and he told us: This should be a factory left over from the "Third Front Construction" period.
The "Third Front Construction" was an extremely large-scale industrial relocation process in my country in the 1960s. At that time, the international situation became increasingly tense. In order to strengthen war preparations, the layout of my country's productive forces was gradually changed from east to west. A major strategic adjustment was made, and the focus of construction was on the southwest and northwest.
Feng County, located deep in the Qinling Mountains, was my country’s only aerospace liquid power research and development base during the third-line construction period. Various types of engines developed here have successfully completed major space launch missions represented by my country's "missile weapons", "manned spaceflight", "Beidou navigation" and "lunar exploration projects", and have made outstanding contributions to the development of China's aerospace industry.
In Hongguanggou, Fengzhou Town, Feng County, there is the former site of the Sixth Aerospace Academy, which is a factory site left over from the third-line construction period. According to data, the Sixth Aerospace Institute of Fengxian Hongguanggou was founded in 1965 and moved to Xi'an in 1993. The original factory building became idle and abandoned. In 2019, it was included in the third batch of national industrial sites and became an emerging red educational tourist attraction.
Fengzhou Village is not far from Hongguanggou and is under the jurisdiction of Fengzhou Town. Then it is reasonable for the villagers to say that this yard is a legacy of the "third line construction". Thinking about it this way, this mysterious factory building can be regarded as a witness to history.
In front of this factory building, there is a large yard. The yard is fully utilized by the eldest sister and is filled with various fruits, vegetables and trees. The most numerous of them are apple trees, with dozens of them.
The eldest sister proudly told us that her apples are also sold online, and she has many repeat customers because her apples are super sweet.
More content:
There is an "abandoned" ancient city deep in the Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi Province. It was once prosperous for more than 2,200 years, but now it is only lonely.
It is a pity that Shaanxi Deep in the Qinling Mountains, the thousand-year-old temple that has been flourishing with incense has now fallen into ruin